Free Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne Page B

you'll have
the glory as well as the sport!"
    "Gentlemen," replied the hunter, stammering with
confusion, "I greatly—appreciate—your compliments—
but they—don't—belong to me."
    "You!" exclaimed every body, "don't you intend to go?"
    "I am not going!"
    "You won't accompany Dr. Ferguson?"
    "Not only shall I not accompany him, but I am here so as
to be present at the last moment to prevent his going."
    Every eye was now turned to the doctor.
    "Never mind him!" said the latter, calmly. "This is
a matter that we can't argue with him. At heart he knows
perfectly well that he IS going."
    "By Saint Andrew!" said Kennedy, "I swear—"
    "Swear to nothing, friend Dick; you have been ganged
and weighed—you and your powder, your guns, and your
bullets; so don't let us say anything more about it."
    And, in fact, from that day until the arrival at Zanzibar,
Dick never opened his mouth. He talked neither about that
nor about anything else. He kept absolutely silent.
CHAPTER NINTH.
    They double the Cape.—The Forecastle.—A Course of Cosmography
by Professor Joe.—Concerning the Method of guiding Balloons.—How
to seek out Atmospheric Currents.—Eureka.
    The Resolute plunged along rapidly toward the Cape
of Good Hope, the weather continuing fine, although the
sea ran heavier.
    On the 30th of March, twenty-seven days after the departure
from London, the Table Mountain loomed up on the horizon.
Cape City lying at the foot of an amphitheatre of hills,
could be distinguished through the ship's glasses, and soon
the Resolute cast anchor in the port. But the captain touched
there only to replenish his coal bunkers, and that was but a
day's job. On the morrow, he steered away to the south'ard,
so as to double the southernmost point of Africa, and enter
the Mozambique Channel.
    This was not Joe's first sea-voyage, and so, for his
part, he soon found himself at home on board; every body
liked him for his frankness and good-humor. A considerable
share of his master's renown was reflected upon him.
He was listened to as an oracle, and he made no more
mistakes than the next one.
    So, while the doctor was pursuing his descriptive course
of lecturing in the officers' mess, Joe reigned supreme
on the forecastle, holding forth in his own peculiar
manner, and making history to suit himself—a style of
procedure pursued, by the way, by the greatest historians
of all ages and nations.
    The topic of discourse was, naturally, the aerial voyage.
Joe had experienced some trouble in getting the rebellious
spirits to believe in it; but, once accepted by them, nothing
connected with it was any longer an impossibility to the
imaginations of the seamen stimulated by Joe's harangues.
    Our dazzling narrator persuaded his hearers that, after
this trip, many others still more wonderful would be undertaken.
In fact, it was to be but the first of a long series
of superhuman expeditions.
    "You see, my friends, when a man has had a taste of that
kind of travelling, he can't get along afterward with any
other; so, on our next expedition, instead of going off to
one side, we'll go right ahead, going up, too, all the time."
    "Humph! then you'll go to the moon!" said one of
the crowd, with a stare of amazement.
    "To the moon!" exclaimed Joe, "To the moon! pooh!
that's too common. Every body might go to the moon,
that way. Besides, there's no water there, and you have
to carry such a lot of it along with you. Then you have
to take air along in bottles, so as to breathe."
    "Ay! ay! that's all right! But can a man get a drop of
the real stuff there?" said a sailor who liked his toddy.
    "Not a drop!" was Joe's answer. "No! old fellow,
not in the moon. But we're going to skip round among
those little twinklers up there—the stars—and the
splendid planets that my old man so often talks about. For
instance, we'll commence with Saturn—"
    "That one with the ring?" asked the boatswain.
    "Yes! the wedding-ring—only no one knows what's
become of his wife!"
    "What? will